Would a sound card be better if i wanted too use a 7.1 surround sound headset ? Im buying off elara.ie and my max budget is 1600 i want too get the best for my money since ive worked hard for it over the past few summers. I will probably get an ssd since my laptop has a 320gb hdd and i am not even using 100gb of it at max. Ill definately get the 650 watt power supply thanks ! Where im really confused is the motherboard i just dont understand what makes some more expensive then others can anyone recommend a good one for gaming ?

- Brand/Vendor name which usually has some associated quality.

Personally, I am heavily biased towards ASUS. Regardless though, to pick a motherboard, start off with a resonable budget and start looking at the features of specific boards. From there you can compare the specs of the boards within a given price-range. If you find that the board with the intial budget are either an overkill or are too weak for your requirements adjust your dudget up or down. (For a first time builder try to resist getting sucked into flashy products like the Sabertooth boards by ASUS, simplicity is your friend, PRO or lower by ASUS.)

Regardless of your location, you can use Newegg to do comparative research of up to five boards - there you will be able to see the number of USB 2.0, USB 3.0, type of sound chip vendor as well as type of codec used, usable RAM quantity. Also, do you want a ATX or an mATX board (standard vs. smaller than standard); do you want PCI-E 3.0 or are you OK with 2.0; do you want any (legacy) PCI slots?

Might take you a couple of days (or even a week) of reasearching but you will end up with a better understanding of what the boards have for specs.